SICE News

Mapping Science Exhibit at the National Research Council - Ottawa, Canada

2008-04-04

The Places & Spaces: Mapping Science Exhibit has been set up in Canada. It will be on display from April 3 to June 27, 2008 at the National Research Council in Ottawa. Russell Duhon, Senior Software Developer, Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center managed the installation of the exhibit and played an active role in the official Opening ceremony on April 3rd. SLIS faculty member Katy Börner is the Center's Founder and Director.

While poster versions of the exhibit have been shown around the world, this is the first physical installation of the Places & Spaces Exhibit outside of the United States.

Exhibit Purpose and Goals [website] "Places & Spaces: Mapping Science is meant to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how to best track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale. It has two components: the physical part supports the close inspection of high quality reproductions of maps for display at conferences and education centers; the online counterpart (http://scimaps.org) provides links to a selected series of maps and their makers along with detailed explanations of how these maps work. The exhibit is a 10-year effort. Each year, 10 new maps are added resulting in 100 maps total in 2014."

There are two special maps accompanying the exhibit in Canada. The first map entitled "NRC Laboratories Connections Across the World" is a collaboration between Yves Gingras (Data Provider), Université du Québec à Montréal, Russell Duhon (Layout), SLIS, Indiana University and Elisha Hardy (Graphic Design), SLIS, Indiana University.

The text from the map reads: Science is essentially an international endeavor. Scientists across the world collaborate and the papers they publish are often signed by many researchers and scientists working in different countries. NRC laboratories are no exception and this map shows the many countries with which NRC scientists across Canada collaborated over the period 2000-2005.

The links between scientists are very dense across the Canadian landscape and with many foreign countries, particularly the USA, Europe and Asia.

The collaboration linkages of each NRC lab are shown by flow maps. In each flow map, tendrils of collaboration spread out from a representative location for the lab, splitting off from other flows as they approach the locations with which the lab has collaborated.

The second map is being finalized. It is collaboration between Jeffrey Demain, NRC and Russell Duhon, Indiana University.